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Activity: Ratios of a miniature Earth

Activity Introduction

Quick summary: Students learn about sustainability by looking at social equality and the imbalance of resources. They learn that rate and ratio problems can be solved using fractions or percentages and choose the most efficient form to solve a particular problem.

Learning goals:

Students learn and revise the use of ratios in everyday life

Students use ratios, percentages and fractions to make calculations

Students are learning about social equality and the imbalance of a minority chewing through more than one planet’s worth of resources.

Extension opportunity: Students can examine other statistics in the video and compare to Australia’s population or even to other countries.

Time needed: 50 minutes

Key words: Mathematics, rates, ratio, sustainability, resources.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher content information:

Approximately 7 billion people live in the world today. The world population increases by about 203,000 people every day. All of these people need resources in order to survive such as food, clean air, clean water and shelter. Some people are consuming more resources than others and this is placing a strain on our planet's ability to provide for us. It’s estimated that humans will consume more in the next 40 years than we have since we first stood on two legs. A big issue is not just consumption itself but the inequality of people receiving these resources and the impacts on our environment.

The richest people on our planet make up 20% of the population, but they account for 77% of the consumption of resources. The poorest 20% account for just 1% of resource consumption. Given that 14% of the world's population is going hungry there is an imbalance that occurs between these two groups. The poorest countries are the places where the biggest population boom

Student Worksheet

Thought Starter: What resources do we need to survive?

Imagine if the world was reduced to the equivalent of just one village of a 100 people with all the existing human ratios remaining the same. Using Table 1 below to estimate the number of people in each of the groups. For example, how many people in the village would be malnourished? Have internet? Have a computer?